The doctor who became a cycling world champion

Anna Morris did not own a road bike until she was almost 20 and had not so much as set foot in a velodrome.

Only three years ago, she watched the Tokyo Olympics from the hospital where she was working.

Now the qualified doctor is a three-time world champion and Olympic medallist.

At last week’s World Track Championships in Denmark, the 29-year-old from Cardiff helped add another team pursuit gold to the team’s title from 2023, before winning a sensational individual pursuit gold that even she did not expect.

Remarkably, it was her first individual pursuit title since winning the university championship title five years ago.

“I haven’t even won Nationals,” she tells BBC Sport Wales.

“I was in shock when I crossed the line and I’m still feeling a bit shocked now.”

Morris grew up in north Cardiff, just minutes from the iconic outdoor Maindy Velodrome which helped launch the cycling careers of the likes of Geraint Thomas, Elinor Barker and Luke Rowe.

But it was gymnastics that attracted Morris growing up. She would train for up to three hours after school.

As a younger child, her cycling efforts peaked at tackling the little hill on the way to the supermarket – though her determination to do so without stopping hinted at a drive she displays in abundance on the track now.

While studying medicine at the University of Southampton, she would do spin classes to keep fit. That was until, in her second year, she got a chance to do some track sessions at Calshot Velodrome.

That led to her first taste of competition at the BUCS (British Universities and Colleges Sport) championships.

Success there earned her support from Welsh Cycling, though her training was fitted in around her medical career.

“It would just be like ‘if I could train, I would do it’,” Morris says.

She would aim for an hour on the turbo trainer in the evenings and a longer ride on weekends. At most she would manage eight hours a week, but that would come down if she was too busy at work.

She would use her annual leave to train longer, either booking a week of cycling in Majorca or riding at home.

By 2021, as the Tokyo Olympics approached, she decided to pause her medical career to focus on an attempt to secure Wales selection for the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

“Going full time made a huge difference, particularly in terms of recovery,” Morris says. “You could control the times you were able to eat, sleep and train.

“At Nationals [in January 2022] I managed to medal in all three endurance events. That was a bit of a turning point and it contributed to Commonwealth Games selection.

“The Commonwealth Games was still another level that I hadn’t operated at before. The roar of the crowd was like nothing I’d heard before.

“Without the platform Welsh Cycling was able to provide me, I would have really struggled to have been able to gain any international racing experience and that level of coaching and support on my own. So it would have been really hard to have bridged that gap to the Great Britain cycling team.”

Great Britain had seen something they liked. They selected her for the European Championships in August 2022.

In the September, she was offered a full-time contract. Her medical career was put on pause again – and that is where it remains.

Morris was part of the women’s team pursuit squad that won the world title in Glasgow in 2023. This year, she was selected for her first Olympics in Paris, winning team pursuit bronze.

A second world title followed in the team pursuit last week, and then came her first major individual title.

Morris defeated four-time world champion Chloe Dygert in sensational fashion, overhauling the American with three laps to go.

“I don’t think I could have ever imagined being world individual pursuit champion,” Morris says. “We were seeing flickers of good form. But on the track it was very much team pursuit-focused.

“The first ride [in the individual pursuit] went a whole lot better than I expected. That definitely gave me more confidence going into the second ride. But I still definitely didn’t think a win was on the cards, because Chloe Dygert is just phenomenal.

“But I knew that, no matter what, I was going to go and ride as hard as I could to that line.”

It was enough to take the win by just over three-tenths of a second.

Afterwards, Sir Chris Hoy hailed Morris’ aerodynamic body shape on the bike as “textbook”.

It is an area the Welshwoman has been focusing on for years, but Morris believes there is no secret to her success beyond training hard and consistently.

There are crossovers with her medical career, not just in relation to knowledge of her body’s physiology and nutrition needs, but when it comes to working in a team and performing well under pressure.

The medical career is something Morris fully intends to resume – but not just yet.

“There are no guarantees in sport,” Morris says. “But at the moment the opportunities are still there. So I’m keen to keep exploring.”